Our Campus Celeb for this week is the wonderfully inspiring Salima Visram. Currently a fourth year student studying International Development at McGill University, Salima has been collaborating with professors along with other professionals in addition to putting countless hours of her own time towards her up-and-coming project entitled, The Soular Backpack. Her project is designed to ultimately help children and students in rural, underdeveloped parts of the world to gain access to electricity by supplying them with backpacks equipped with solar panels. These solar panels collect electricity throughout the day and can be transferred as a light source back home where many families lack electricity, thus enriching the students’ adacemic lives by allowing them to have a light source in order to do their school work. These solar powered lamps would replace the kerosene lamps that most families now use, which pose different negative health risks.
Tina Arani for Her Campus McGill (HC McGill): What sparked your inspriation to create a project that helped these kids in rural, underdeveloped countries?
Salima Visram (SV): I grew up in Kenya and I lived beside the Kikambala village which is home to 22,000 people who all live below the poverty line. Just seeing the effect that poverty has on people from a really young age always made me really empathize with them and made me realize how lucky I was to never have to be in that situation where I had to worry about not having any food at night or not having any water. My parents always ensured that I knew that as I grew as an individual, I had a responsibility to ensure that the people around me grew too. So, from when I was really young, I was always looking for a way to kind of revolutionize their lives. Even though that might be idealistic, I think this is something that targets three different issues, in the sense that it is related to the kerosene issue, health, and education. It’s the first time that I’ve really found a three-pronged approach to addressing poverty. I think just growing up and seeing the effect that poverty had on kids, especially, and how it affects their future and their opportunities is what made me decide to do it.
HC McGill: For those who haven’t heard of your project, what is The Soular Backpack all about?
SV: The goal is to raise $40,000 to get 2,000 backpacks on the ground. I just got the prototype of the backpack, and the plan is to give them out to students in the Kikambala village as a pilot project and to do a baseline study to see the effects that the backpack has on their grades before and after their entrance into secondary school.
HC McGill: How did you decide on a backpack among other potential items? How does it work exactly, and what are the benefits?
SV: When I first thought of the idea, I had a “light bulb” moment. I first though of a pen that had a light on top of it that would be solar powered. When I spoke to an engineer friend of mine, I was really excited about it but he shot it down saying, “No, that’s a stupid idea.” I was really upset after that. I thought about a lot of things from a solar powered hat, to a mobile library, to a track that would get lit up at night, but each of those had different issues. My whole point behind it was to give a child a tool for empowerment where it’s something that they own, that they can walk to school with and it can’t be taken away from them. They walk to school to get educated, and then they can come back home at night with a tool to help them study and continue their education. So that’s why I thought the backpack would be the best option because it’s their own tool for empowerment.
HC McGill: Was it hard getting people to listen to your idea? How did you go about getting people’s attention?
SV: It wasn’t that hard because I approached my professor, Anita Nowak, who always supported it from the begininning and allowed me to do my independent research study at McGill. McGill has been really supportive of it and I’m also using it for another class, my other research seminar. I have two or three professors that have really backed me up and my friends and my family have been very supportive, so that hasn’t been really hard. The hard part is getting it out to the public as far as the crowd-funding campaign, and just trying to get the word out there beyond my network.
Salima photographed with Muhammad Yunus last week in New Mexico, after pitching The Soular Backpack.
HC McGill: How do you manage to balance being a university student and basically running an NGO?
SV: It’s a different type of work for me. It came to the point where I just felt like my classes weren’t what I wanted them to be, and then I thought, “Why can’t I just do something that I’m passionate about and get credit for it?” If it weren’t for the two classes that let me work on this project, I don’t know how I would have done it. I think doing things that you are passionate about and making them work for you is important in terms of giving them back to professors, getting credit for them, and using time at school to work on them.
HC McGill: What experiences have you gained from leading this project and how has it contributed to your university experience at McGill?
SV: It has definitely made me meet a lot more people who are passionate about the same things. I think just getting the word out there has made me meet a lot of people who are genuinely passionate about changing the world and there are a lot of those people at McGill. It’s so inspiring to see because I came to a point where I didn’t think that anymore. In terms of what I’ve learned through this project, I’ve learned how important the advice and opinions of other people can be. Everyone has something to offer. The amount of people who have come up to me at McGill and have said, “Hey, we want to help you,” or, “How can we help you?” or, “Tell us what we can do for you,” has been really refreshing and has made me look at McGill in a different way. It’s really nice to see that people are genuinely nice and supportive.
HC McGill: What advice can you give to students or to young people who want to potentially start their own projects?
SV: I think it’s really easy to be discouraged by a lot of bumps along the way. A quote that really stuck by me was, “As women, we find nine reasons why we should do something and one reason why we shouldn’t. And we always let that one reason stop us.” I did have that one reason to not do this, which was being scared of failure or other small reasons. But the other nine reasons for why I should do it were there. I could have easily said, “I’m not going to do it” because of that one reason but I think it’s important to take the risk and not let your passion go because of fear. I would say to not be afraid to ask for help because a lot of professors and a lot of people at McGill are willing to help and also to make school work for you. Do something you’re passionate about and also get credit for it. Make McGill your place.
For more information on The Soular Backpack and how you can help make Salima’s dream a reality, click here.
You can also follow her campaign on Facebook .
Images provided by interviewee.